Sunday, December 24, 2017

Storm day skiing is always fun, and Friday's snow brought us free refills all day long at Stratton. Light snow had started falling overnight, and by the time we got to the mountain 2 to 3 inches were on the ground. 9am conditions may have been a bit shy of "powder day" status, but by late morning things were getting pretty legit.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

The timing of last week's storm couldn't have been better for Pico. Storm on Tuesday, open for the season on Friday. The 18 inches that fell allowed Pico to open with 35 trails, including quite a bit of natural snow terrain. We would have loved to be there on Friday, but settling for Saturday wasn't half bad.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

The second weekend in December is pretty late in the season for us to log our first day at Gore (it's already their fourth weekend of operation), but we've been making the rounds with our MaxPasses. Gore's been our home mountain for years, and we were saying hi to old friends before we even had our skis on.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

After all the excitement of the World Cup events over Thanksgiving, Killington was high on our list for a visit. So we loaded up the car and headed over to the Green Mountain State early Sunday morning.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

They say that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, but in our family we prefer to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving by going skiing. Often "White Friday" marks our first ski day of the year, but with the early start to the season that we've had this year it's already our third weekend skiing.

Okemo has worked out well for our early season outings. Thanks to their snowmaking firepower, they reported the most open terrain (a little over a hundred acres) in the east.

Monday, November 20, 2017

Like most eastern skiers, we don't count on skiing before Thanksgiving, so with two "bonus" weekends now in the books it seems like we're off to a great to the season. After hitting Okemo's opening day last weekend, we ratcheted our ski game up a notch for Whiteface's opening day this weekend.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

I'm not sure it can be considered a "preview" if the ski season has already started, but you can read my ski season preview in the current print edition of Adirondack Sports and Fitness, or online here:

Monday, November 13, 2017

After a record warm October it was a huge relief to finally see cold weather arrive in full force last week. A few cold nights was all it took for Killington, Okemo and Mount Snow to blow enough snow to kick off the 2017-18 ski season. We toyed with the idea of hitting Killington but ultimately decided that Okemo would offer more skiing and less crowds. We'll save our Killington days for later in the season when there's more terrain open.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

We were looking for an easy, close-to-home hike on Sunday when I remembered Dippikill, the 850 acre camp just outside Warrensburg owned by the SUNY Albany Student Association. Dippikill's trail network is open to the general public, including a nice 4-mile loop that climbs 1600' Dippikill Mountain and circles Dippikill Pond.

Friday, September 8, 2017

We spend quite a few of our summer weekends in Bolton Landing and end up repeating many of the nearby hikes each year. Cat and Thomas Mountains and the Pinnacle are all great short hikes, but among these Cat, in my opinion, offers the best views of Lake George and the surrounding mountains.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

We've knocked off plenty of the Adirondack "low peaks" on our family hikes over the past few years, but for some unknown reason we never got around to hiking Blue Mountain. With stunning lake and mountain views and a relatively easy ascent, Blue delivers a lot of bang for the buck.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

We’ve made it something of an annual tradition to head up to Rollins Pond for a weekend of camping and paddling, using the state campground at Rollins as our base. You can’t beat the campsites – nearly every one has direct waterfront – or the access to excellent flatwater paddling.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

It's been a tough spring if you're a hiker, but we finally got out the first weekend in June. Daniel, our 13-year-old son, has been interested in hiking some of the High Peaks (both our kids have dozens of "low" peaks under their belts), and we settled on Giant for his #3 (he's already got Cascade and Porter).

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

It's amazing how quickly a strong April sun can bring the ski season to an end. After starting out the month with mid-winter conditions and full trail counts, Gore and Whiteface were working hard to piece together skiable routes just two weeks later. With some creative route finding and a willingness to slide across some occasional snirt, we closed out our season at Whiteface on a high note.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

If you like spring skiing - and who doesn't? - Sunday was a day not to be missed. Not a cloud in the sky, temperatures warming into the upper 50s (my car said 65 pulling out of Gore's lot around 3:30) and deep snow above mid-mountain thanks to a string of late season storms.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Stella may have saved the tail end of the 2016-17 ski season, but the April Fools Day storm really put the icing on the cake - literally - with ski areas across the Adirondacks and Vermont reporting between 8 and 16 inches of spring powder. After a great day at Pico just two weeks earlier, the Saratoga Skier team got to work scheming out a way to get a taste of the 14 inches Pico received. Thanks to Pico and our good friends the Albas, plans were made for an early Sunday morning departure for the quick drive over to Vermont.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Our gamble with a dicey weather forecast paid off Sunday morning as we were greeted with sun and blue skies. By the time we booted up and boarded the gondi, warm air aloft (the summit was a good 10 degrees warmer than the base) and the strong March sun had already worked their magic.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

A Friday school holiday (Superintendent's Day) plus discounted lift tickets (half price at MRG and pre-season, pre-buy tickets for Pico) provided the perfect opportunity for the kids to add a couple new stickers to their helmets. And a storm named Stella didn't hurt either.

Monday, March 13, 2017

Cold, empty, firm & fast. Saturday at Gore was almost a carbon copy of the previous weekend. If anything, conditions were just a bit better than last weekend thanks to an inch or two of snow Friday night and a solid effort from the grooming crews.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

After a great stretch of conditions from late January through Presidents' Day Weekend, mother nature seems bent on punishing east coast skiers. We arrived home from Montana last week at the tail end of the multi-day stretch of blowtorch temperatures that vaporized the Adirondacks' snowpack. To add insult to injury, the meltdown was followed by some of the coldest temperatures of the winter, with highs barely cracking the 10-degree mark on Saturday.

Friday, March 3, 2017

When I skied Big Sky, Montana four years ago, I knew it was a place I'd eventually want to return to with the family. After a great week-long trip to Steamboat, CO two years ago, I know we were ready to make the jump up to Big Sky.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Quick update from Gore on Saturday. Rain earlier in the week put an end to the nice 2+ week stretch of great ski conditions. 4 inches of snow on Thursday followed by 2 more Friday night helped bring conditions back, although the icy crust lurked below the surface at all times to remind skiers that this is the east.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

I wasn’t exactly wishing I was back east, but the reports I heard while I was at Whistler sounded like conditions at Gore and Whiteface were about the best they’ve been in two years. Luckily, those conditions only got better during the week that followed.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Whistler seems to be on every avid skier’s must-ski list, and I was lucky enough to enjoy my first visit there last week on my annual "guys' trip." It’s hard to describe Whistler-Blackcomb if you’ve never been, but “big” is a good start. With 8 thousand skiable acres, 5 thousand vertical feet and two huge mountains, 3 days of skiing was barely enough to just scratch the surface.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

No skier would actually wish for April temperatures in January, but nobody was complaining at Whiteface on Saturday when temperatures climbed into the upper 30s by opening bell. The mild weather softened surfaces from base to summit, delivering spring conditions that were a vast improvement over the frozen ice cube that would have greeted skiers had temperatures been 10 degrees colder. In the middle of what has been a vicious January thaw, we got the next best thing to a powder day.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

“Head for Canada!” has been frequently heard around the Saratoga Skier household since November, but it has nothing to do with the presidential election. It’s all about the snow – north of the St. Lawrence was the jackpot for eastern snowfall last winter (about 130% of normal), and that trend has continued into this winter as well.

Friday, January 6, 2017

We had a nice stretch of skiing over the New Year holiday, leveraging our ORDA passes for maximum variety over the three days.

Like most working Americans, I was scheduled to work on Friday and be off on Monday, but with the incoming storm Thursday night I quickly swapped out Monday for Friday. Apparently I wasn't the only one to come up with that idea as we arrived Friday morning to a rapidly filling parking lot, probably the busiest day we've seen at Gore in two years.